


We'll Fight the Cold with Silver and Gold

by butterflyslinky



Series: Life Will Begin with the Color on My Skin [4]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Aromantic, Car Accidents, I'm Sorry, Multi, Platonic Soulmates, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-28
Updated: 2015-03-28
Packaged: 2018-03-19 23:49:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3628794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/butterflyslinky/pseuds/butterflyslinky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When your soulmate gets a bruise, you get one in a different color. Thor and Loki know that they were always meant to be brothers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We'll Fight the Cold with Silver and Gold

**Author's Note:**

> This is the last work in this series and I'm so sorry it's ending this way.

Thor’s soul bruises hadn’t started by the time he was four. This wasn’t unusual, especially if one’s soulmate was younger, and his parents weren’t particularly worried about it, though they were concerned with how rough and careless Thor was when he played.

“You’ll turn your soulmate into a panda!” his mother Frigga scolded every time he fell and hurt himself and then got up with a laugh.

Thor tried, he really did, but there was so much to do and explore that he kept forgetting.

“He’s young, after all,” his father Odin said. “Every small child hurts himself sometimes. He’ll grow out of it.”

Frigga clucked when he said that, but she didn’t argue.

One day, though, Thor’s parents started packing for a trip—one that he wasn’t going on. “Where you goin’?” Thor asked, peering into his mother’s suitcase.

“We’re going over to Iceland for a week or two,” she explained. “There’s a little boy there whose parents couldn’t take care of him, and we’re going to bring him back here to live with us.”

“Oh,” Thor said, not really understanding. “How long will he live with us?”

“Always,” Frigga said. “We’re adopting him.”

“What does adopting mean?”

“It means that Daddy and I wrote a lot of letters, and an agent wrote a lot of letters back, and then we sign some paperwork and the little boy becomes our son, and your brother.”

“Oh.” Thor nodded happily at this explanation. “I’d like a brother. Is he my age?”

“A bit older,” Frigga said. “But he’s smaller than you, and doesn’t have parents, so you’ll have to teach him how to be good, and not be too rough with him while you’re playing.”

“Okay,” Thor said. “So who’s gonna sit me while you’re getting him?”

“Your Aunt Fulla is going to be here tomorrow and she’ll stay with you.”

“Okay.” Thor happily picked up his toy hammer and skipped off to the other room.

*

Thor’s parents did indeed return a week later. Frigga was carrying a small, dark-haired boy dressed in green overalls who kept his face buried in her shoulder. Thor ran out to meet them immediately.

“Mommy!” he cried, rushing to hug her around the knees.

“Hello, Thor,” she said, kneeling down with the boy. “This is your new brother, Loki.”

The little boy looked up for a second and then ducked back down shyly.

“Hi, Loki!” Thor said excitedly. Loki flinched a bit.

“You’re going to have to use a quieter voice,” Frigga urged. “He’s very shy and isn’t used to so much noise.”

“Sorry,” Thor whispered.

Frigga put Loki down, though Loki kept hiding behind her skirt. “Loki also doesn’t speak much Swedish,” she explained. “So he may not understand everything you tell him. You’re going to have to be very, very patient with him.”

“Okay,” Thor said. He smiled at the other boy, who peeked at him from behind Frigga’s skirt.

Odin chuckled. “Were you good while we were gone?” he asked.

“Uhhuh,” Thor said. He approached Loki. “You wanna play?” he asked.

Loki looked confused, but Thor held up his hammer. “Come on!” he said, gesturing toward the yard. Loki looked up at Frigga for a moment, who smiled and nodded, before he crept out from behind her and followed Thor.

Loki didn’t have any toys with him, but Thor led him over to the outdoor toys they could use. “Pick anything!” he said enthusiastically. Loki’s brow furrowed, and Thor gestured toward the box. After a moment, Loki reached in a picked up a small gold staff. Thor smiled and held up his hammer. Loki grinned back and hit the hammer gently with the staff.   
Thor laughed and they began having a small, clumsy play-fight with their respective toys.

They carried on for several minutes before Loki began running, turning now and then to strike back at Thor. Thor gave chase, continuing the fight, both boys laughing, and even if they didn’t understand each other’s words, they understood their actions well enough. They scampered over the yard until Loki turned too quickly and accidentally fell down and banged his knees.

Both boys cried out, tears springing to their eyes. Loki’s knees bruised quickly, and on Thor’s knees, two bright spots of silver appeared in the same shapes.

Frigga came hurrying over. “What happened?” she demanded.

Loki started babbling in Icelandic and Thor started crying harder. “Loki fell down, by accident, and I hurt and my knees turned colors!”

Frigga looked at Thor’s knees, then at Loki’s, and then at both boy’s tears. Then she picked Loki up and Odin came and lifted Thor.

“What does it mean, Daddy?” Thor asked through his sobs and the children were carried into the house.

Odin was quiet for a long time before he answered, “It means you were always meant to be brothers.”

*

Loki learned very quickly, and within three months, he spoke Swedish about as well as Thor did and had learned most of the rules of the house. He and Thor played together   
often, but now both were very careful—not because they didn’t want to get hurt themselves, but because they didn’t like seeing marks on the other. Thor would never forget the day when he had first banged his elbow into a tree and Loki had screamed as a bright gold bruise appeared on his arm.

Their parents sighed whenever they spotted the bright metallic colors on the boys, but never said anything about it. There was nothing they could do, after all. When two souls were so tightly bound, nothing could separate them for too long.

Thor and Loki didn’t really understand that they were soulmates, of course. It was a difficult thing to explain to a five-year-old. But the boys did understand each other, to the point where they almost knew what the other was thinking, and invariably knew what the other needed.

Thor took to it immediately. Even though Loki was older than him, Thor was much stronger, and he felt the overwhelming need to take care of Loki at all times. When Loki cried when he was hurt, Thor always ran to help him in spite of his own pain. When Loki accidentally broke a rule (or even not-so-accidentally), Thor always stood up for him and showed him the correct way. When Loki had nightmares and cried at night, he knew he could always crawl into Thor’s bed and hide under the covers with his brother until it passed.

As they grew up, though, Thor began to realize things about Loki. Loki was clever, and mischievous, and got into far more trouble than he was worth. He tended to take things without asking and talk back to their parents and teachers—in spite of their age difference, they were in the same class at school. When they were still small, Thor tried to teach   
Loki to be good, with bribes and scare tactics, but they never seemed to work. Thor loved his brother, and was frustrated that Loki didn’t care for anyone’s rules but his own.

*

Loki was fifteen and Thor was fourteen and a half, both in their awkward adolescence, though Thor seemed to be growing a bit more gracefully, large muscles and golden hair and a smile that lit up every room it was in. Loki, by contrast, was frail and sallow, dark hair falling lank around his face as he stumbled over his own feet trying to get to class. Thor was loud and outgoing, with lots of friends, a spot on the school football team, and decent enough grades in all his classes. Loki was quiet, awkward around people, preferring to scribble in his notebooks that he never let anyone else see than play games or do schoolwork.

It was clear that Loki was a bit of an oddball, and while Thor knew that Loki was far smarter than anyone else in the class, the boy’s grades began slipping anyway. Their parents lectured him, telling him that he has to try at least a little bit, but Loki’s mind was on far more important things than geometry. Thor wasn’t sure exactly what Loki wrote in his notebooks, but his brother did spend a lot of time sitting on their bedroom floor, pontificating about all the bad in the world and how there needed to be a strong leader to keep it from falling into disaster.

Thor didn’t really understand most of Loki’s points. He could only assure him that those in power were doing their best and he just had to hope. Or maybe Loki could apply himself a bit more and do well enough to become one of them one day. Loki gave his brother a hard look and said that wouldn’t do and Thor ought to be able to understand him. 

They were soulmates. Didn’t that mean Thor could relate to him better than this?

“No,” Thor said. “It only means that I keep up with you better than other people.”

“That’s not saying much,” Loki muttered.

No one ever saw their soulmarks. They made too much of an effort not to hurt themselves. Thor got a few more bruises on the football field, but Loki hid the golden marks behind baggy clothes and long hair. Thor didn’t have to bother. Loki hurt himself so rarely and never very seriously so Thor wasn’t always marked in silver. Very few of their classmates knew they were soulmates.

That is, very few knew until some of the other boys decided that Loki was just too odd.

Thor felt it, of course, when they started in on his brother, and without a word, he abandoned his own group and ran to find him, using his pain to lead the way, ignoring the people who shouted to him as more and more silver marks started to appear on his skin.

He found Loki behind the school building in a heap on the ground. The other boys were standing around, shouting insults and kicking at him. Thor growled low in his throat and launched himself at them.

It should have ended badly, but Thor was always a loud fighter, and soon enough several teachers appeared to break up the fight, along with a number of girls and one or two boys who showed up with bright splotches on their skins, some confused, some crying. It took over an hour for the teachers to sort everyone out, but soon enough it became clear to everyone what had happened.

Thor and Loki were soulmates. And now everyone knew about it.

*

At first, it was a bit unbearable, with people hissing insults at them both, implying things about their relationship that were not and had never been true.

Thor bore it well enough, but Loki withdrew even more, his classmate’s taunts in his ear. There were weeks on end where Loki didn’t talk to Thor, or anyone, unless he was spoken to first, and then only in monosyllables. 

Thor tried. He chattered away to Loki as usual, saying whatever he could think of to comfort him, but it didn’t help. Loki simply wrote in his notebook, or did his schoolwork, and nothing Thor did could draw him out.

Finally, he couldn’t take it anymore.

“It doesn’t mean romance,” he said firmly one evening, completely out of nowhere. Loki looked up, startled.

“What do you mean?” Loki asked.

“Soulmates. It doesn’t mean it has to be romantic, or sexual, or whatever else they keep implying.” Thor looked at his brother seriously. “It just means we understand each other…that we have a connection.”

“I know,” Loki said. “But…it’s so often seen as a romantic thing. And…and what if you meet someone later, someone you do love that way? What if you find someone who also has gold bruises and who’s better suited to be your soulmate than I am?”

“I only bear silver,” Thor pointed out. “There is no one else…just you.”

Loki sighed. “I just fear that one day, I might not be enough,” he admitted. “That you’ll leave me for someone else.”

Thor shook his head. “My soulmate,” he said. “I cannot leave you. Not ever.”

*

Thor left him four years later when he went to university in England.

Loki had never even thought about following. He didn’t even sit his exams, not caring about anything except his brother and his plots. Thor didn’t understand. He was supposed to, but he didn’t. And in a way, Loki even understood that—Thor was a good boy, raised on the system, a good man who would never step over anyone to achieve his dreams.

But Loki…Loki was different. Loki could look beyond the power that was, to the way the world should be, and he could plot and plan and scheme better with books than he could with school. He would bring order to the world. He could do it, with just a bit of gumption.

But he wanted Thor with him. He wanted his soulmate to share in the glory.

And Thor would never do that.

So Loki resigned himself to doing it all alone, while working as a waiter to pay the bills until then. It wasn’t a bad job—mostly tourists who tipped well—but it was still far below what Loki was capable of. But he would endure. He would see the world brought into a new age—his age.

Then Thor brought Jane home.

Jane had no soul bruises. No gold, no silver, nothing. Loki noticed that right away. An unattached woman, just right for someone like Thor who was bound to a brother he did not desire in that manner.

Loki hated her immediately.

The trouble was, there was no reason to actually hate her. She was pleasant, if a bit strange, and she was very smart and extremely dedicated to her work. Loki should have admired that in her, and he even had to admit that there were many things in Jane that were also true of himself. He could even reluctantly admit that this made her a good match for Thor.

But she was a good match for Thor. She was taking him. And the worst part was, she understood that Loki was his soulmate, that she would have to come second, and she was fine with that.

“She won’t pay attention to you,” Loki protested in private. “She sees science and she’ll abandon you to go investigate—that’s probably why she doesn’t have marks, her only passion is her work!”

Thor frowned. “You are the same way when planning to take over the world,” he pointed out.

“She doesn’t understand you like I do, though!” Loki said.

“Are you jealous?” Thor asked. “Because you know that you are my soulmate. Jane…Jane is something else.”

Loki turned away to hide his tears. “I don’t know what it means to be your soulmate,” he admitted.

Thor put a hand on his shoulder. “It means that you are my brother,” he said. “Is that not enough?”

Loki glanced back at him. “I suppose it must be,” he said grudgingly.

*

Thor couldn’t bear to see his brother in distress, so when the time came to return to London, he begged Loki to come with them. And Loki, unable to bear to think of what might happen to Thor without him, agreed.

London was wonderful. Since Thor and Jane were still in school, Loki was free to wander the town as he willed, taking whatever work he could but spending most of his time in the library, reading more books than he had ever known existed, learning more and more about the world and its injustices and making plans to change it.

And if he had to put up with Jane every night, with her kind smiles and ramblings about science, at least Thor was there, too, steady, golden Thor, laughing at both Jane and Loki, smiling more than ever now that there were no marks on any of them. There was no reason for them. And for once, Loki dared think that maybe he was happy. Maybe things were all right.

*

They went out one night, the three of them, and they were all quite giddy by the time they were walking home. Loki had made a break-through in his plans, had found a way to make it all work, and he was feeling quite good about everything, even Jane, even as she clung to Thor’s arm and looked at Loki with patient eyes as he rambled about his revelation.

None of them saw the car coming.

Well, Thor did. He saw in time to grab Jane, who was closer to him, and haul her back to the pavement before there was a scream, a lot of crunching, and the most intense pain he had ever felt hit him, spreading through his entire body, bringing him to his knees as his arms and leg and neck all turned silver. There was more shouting, and Jane was screaming, but Thor had to get to Loki, had to find his brother, had to know what was causing them so much pain…

He managed to stand, to stagger to the middle of the street where Loki still lay, breathing hard. Thor fell beside him and pulled his brother into his arms. “Brother,” he whispered.

“Brother,” Loki said. “Yes…I like that…brother…”

Tears were falling fast from Thor’s eyes. “Loki, you’re hurt,” he said, even though he knew it went beyond that, as he saw the cuts and the blood and felt the pain ripping through his own body.

“I’m dying,” Loki said simply, an echo of what Thor’s soul was already telling him. “But that’s all right, isn’t it?”

“No,” Thor said. “No, it’s not…if you die…I can’t…I don’t know what I’ll do.”

“You have Jane,” Loki whispered. “And you know I’ll come back…neither of us can move on without the other.”

“I feel I’m dying with you,” Thor said.

“No,” Loki said. “You aren’t. Not this time.” He coughed. “My soul…our soul…we were always meant to be brothers.”

“Yes,” Thor said. “Yes, brothers.” He kissed Loki’s forehead. “I love you…I know you.”

“I know,” Loki said, then his eyes closed.

*

Jane didn’t understand. Thor knew she couldn’t. Her soul was already whole. She didn’t know what it was to have half of it ripped away from her.

He felt empty. Incomplete, with no Loki there to rant about things that Thor had secretly known but been too afraid to say, no Loki to protect and defend, no Loki to share his fears and hopes with. Jane was wonderful, but she wasn’t him.

Thor wandered through life in a daze, the silver covering his arms and legs and chest never fading. And they wouldn’t fade until Loki was reborn, until Thor knew his soul could be mended. And when it was, when Loki returned to the world, what then? Was Thor to wait even longer for him to grow up, to spend the rest of his life looking for golden bruises, to spend the rest of eternity just missing each other because they could never make themselves whole again?

But wait he did. He didn’t have a choice. He had to keep waiting, had to keep hoping that he would find his brother again. That he would feel less empty.

That the silver and gold would one day be at peace.


End file.
